


She Won't Stand Still Forever

by ifinkufreaky



Category: Spartacus Series (TV), Spartacus: Vengeance
Genre: F/M, Hand Jobs, Past Abuse, Trauma Recovery, sweaty lust
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-02
Updated: 2018-10-02
Packaged: 2019-07-23 20:37:46
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,822
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16166570
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ifinkufreaky/pseuds/ifinkufreaky
Summary: Naevia can't bear to let Crixus touch her, but slowly her lust for him is starting to come back. One day he looks so sexy chopping wood under the sun that she decides to find a way to share what intimacy she can allow with him.





	She Won't Stand Still Forever

He’s positively glistening with sweat, tawny skin shining in the sun. It’s the way he used to look when they oiled him up for the arena, in that other life they used to live. The one where Naevia feels now that they were both half-asleep, floating along according to other people’s plans for them. In that life, Crixus was the only choice she ever made for herself.

Naevia slows her steps, setting the empty water jug against her hip as she watches the one-time Champion of Capua chop logs to feed their camp’s fires. It’s different from watching him spar, and train other men in the fighting arts; she wasn’t lying when she told him the first time they spoke that she had little love for violence. This though… the way his flanks ripple every time he brings the axe overhead, the breathy groans that escape his lips with each exertion… This is a use of his powerful body to care for others, to make sure food is hot and nights are warm. This reminds her of the dreams of the innocent girl she once was.

The sentiment is similar enough to the way lying in his arms used to make her feel that she blushes, presses her thighs together at the tingling that starts there. It has been only recently that she’s healed enough in mind and body to even want to begin remembering what they did together in those precious moments they could steal away alone in the house of Batiatus, to let mind linger on memory that a man’s touch could bring anything but pain.

Crixus notices her, lips bending to an echo of that cocky smile he perfected in his undefeated years. He takes another swing with the axe. Naevia walks faster past him, afraid to let him see that she was admiring him. He has been nothing but patient, and understanding, that she still cannot bear to share her body with him now. She knows he hopes she will one day be ready, as she hopes for it too. To kindle that hope today only to dash it later would be cruel, she thinks, and rushes on.

She steals her looks only in secret, remembering lust in small doses, testing herself just until the tide turns and uglier memories roll in.

Crixus is still chopping when she returns from the river, her pitcher now as full as her mind. She hasn’t stopped thinking about him through the whole of the mundane task. It is a good day, and the tide has still not turned. She walks as slowly as she can, coming up on him from behind so that she can enjoy the way the muscles clench and glide across his broad back with every swing.

It’s her choice. She can have him again, whenever she’s ready. The thought makes her stand up straighter, sends perhaps the ghost of a feminine roll to her hips as she walks past him, carrying her heavy pitcher on her shoulder back to their tent.

She catches his eye, and whatever Crixus sees in her face makes him stop short, then embed his axe in the chopping block. Panting from his exertion, his gaze shifts to the pitcher, and he motions a silent request for a drink.

He watches her with wary interest as she steps up to him and offers the jar. He can feel something is different in her mind today. But her smile is shy and so Crixus stays silent as he takes the vessel and brings it to his lips. Naevia cannot tear her eyes from the way his throat works as he refreshes himself. His greedy gulps spill beads of water that run over his jaw and mingle with the sweat already glistening down his neck.

“Have you finished your work?” she asks softly. She wants him to say yes and she wants him to say no. She finds since they have reunited that she wants to be with him every moment even as there is a part that can’t stand for him to even _see_ her, to touch her, to want her…

“Just about,” his voice rumbles, and he stands perfectly still. He will not pull away or push closer. It’s her choice.

She watches a drop of moisture spill over his collarbone and roll down his chest. She decides to be brave. She doesn’t want to stand still forever. “Then come back to our tent. Let me use the rest of this cool water to wipe the sweat and dirt from your body.”

 

Her hand trembles as she presses the cloth to Crixus’ skin, but she doesn’t let that stop her. They stand in the privacy of their own simple shelter, in the soft light seeping in from the seams of the fabric walls. Naevia lets the rag give him the caresses that her fingers don’t dare, across the planes of his pectorals, through the little valleys that cut and define his shoulders.

She turns to soak up new water in the cloth, and when she brings her hands back up to his body he sees them wavering. On instinct, his arms swoop around to comfort her, but Naevia stops him before he makes contact. “Wait.”

Not ‘stop.’ Just ‘wait.’ She knows in her bones that he would wait for her forever.

“Right now I touch you, and you do not touch me.”

It’s an admission, this little rule. He understands instantly that she’s saying there is more than just bathing going on here. His exhale is audible, but not aggressive. He reaches to either side and closes his fingers around two of the sapling poles that hold up their little tent. A clear signal in return: he has opened himself to her, but his hands will stay restrained. He watches her face as she stares at his body.

She feels her lust coiling, like a cat winding itself around her legs. She tries not to fear it. She’s safe here. Crixus will let her make the rules.

There is love and apprehension, love and longing, love and _understanding_ in his eyes as he stares down at her while she slides the cloth under his neck. He doesn’t look at her body. He doesn’t look at her like those other men did. And yet she feels more bare to him than if all her clothes were in a pool around her feet.

It’s a loss and a relief both when she moves out of his view, behind his back, and plays her rag across his shoulderblades and the hollows between them. Her lust creeps up into her throat and behind her eyes, here where he can’t watch it simmer. She lets her face get close, dares to allow him to feel her breath exhale heavily against his skin.

They never had time to go slow like this.

When she finishes with his back, Naevia’s breaths are coming fast, and she feels her nipples poking against the rough fabric of her dress. She’s been remembering what he awoke in her the first time he dared to press his lips against her own. She feels almost that new at this again, now.

Naevia ducks under his outstretched arm and stands in front of Crixus again, both of them panting as she runs her cloth along his side, over his chiseled stomach. She ponders his belt, her hand wiping back and forth more times than is necessary just above it. The straining bulge underneath that line is unmistakeable.

“You don’t have to do anything else,” Crixus croaks above her ear.

But she wants to take another step, dare to take her lover in hand again. She won't let those terrible Romans at those terrible villas have taken this away from her too. She loves Crixus, and she trusts him.

He wheezes when she sets fingers to buckles, trying to restrain his sounds of enthusiasm. But she wants him to enjoy this, dares a few soft kisses to his chest as she loosens the leather binding his clothing.

His cheek nuzzles the top of her head, answering kisses pressing there until Naevia looks up at his face just as she lets his garment fall. Her hands hover in midair, her eyes not quite daring to look down at what she has revealed.

Crixus tries to look warm and patient, but a sudden shadow passes across his face. Naevia realizes his position, standing there exposed, is too similar to what those Roman women had so often done to him. And yet Naevia still doesn’t feel safe enough to let him move, cannot offer him free reign for his lust.

But she can tell him a new story to replace the old. “I often dreamed,” she begins softly, almost whispering in his ear, “before I acquired the key to that gate in the cellar...” She stretches her palm wide, lifting it to hover a few inches away from his chest. “At that time I dreamed of what I did not yet have the courage to do.” She closes her fingers, mimes reaching through the narrow bars and grasping something in her hand.

Crixus’ face clears, and she knows she has helped him push painful memories aside. As he is helping her to do too. His erection bounces as Naevia reaches down, and she hears the wood of the tent poles flex under his grip when she wraps her hand around his tall, straining shaft.

“I spent hours dreaming of how I would touch you, how best my hand might bring joy, when no other parts could join.”

Crixus groans at that, letting his hips press toward her while he holds everything else back. She strokes him from root to tip, remembering more innocent days and the movements she had rehearsed.

They stare into each others’ eyes, neither of them able to look anywhere else as she stokes his mighty passion. The noise coming from the back of his throat is wavering in time to her tugs, and when he shifts his grip to help himself stay standing Naevia gets a little worried he’s about to bring their tent crashing down around them.

Crixus’ face grows wondering, vulnerable, almost lost. His mouth hangs open, needy and overcome. He won’t touch her with his hands but when his eyes grow watery and tight he presses his cheek against hers, so he can close his eyes and not lose her. He groans through his teeth as his cock spasms in her hands, the sound a kind of keening, joy and grief at once. They’ve been through so much to get here.

She keeps him in her hands as he grows flaccid, pressing her cheek firmly back against his while he pants into the curve of her neck. When he is completely soft, more of the apprehension fades. “Embrace me now, please,” she requests, and Crixus’ warm arms don’t let her go until morning.


End file.
